floppy

If the other computer cant read it then the disk might be damaged. Do you know how the disk is formatted now? Your best chance is to read it with the same operating system that the disk was created with.

There are applications out there to read damaged disks. But if you really need the data on there then your better off bringing it to a data recovery service. The more you work with it the more damaged it can get.

Otherwise you can try getting an external floppy drive, they run $15-$30. See if your computer can read it.

Because there's always the sad possibility that the floppy has been wiped by external magnetic sources; hifi speakers, power supplies, etc.

Also, depending on its age, it may be of a format that a 'modern' floppy drive cannot read (there have been several floppy disk formats over the years).

It may also not be a PC format - where did the floppy come from? It may belong to a different computer system than a PC.

For a start - what colour is the case?
And how many write protect tabs does it have?
Is there a format legend on the metal slider?

Floppie discs, and drives are very touchy. I have had numerous discs that would read on one drive but not another.

Is there any kind of public Library or Campus that you could access to see if another system will read the disc? If you can get it to read, you may be able to Email the contents to yourself and then open them on a system that will let you copy to CD.
The only other solution I can think of would be you spending money on an external floppie drive you could connect to your Laptop through a USB port.
But free is always better so try to find an area that gives you access to the drive.

I could recommend work but that may get you in trouble since most have strict rules against bringing in personal devices and connecting to their networks.

http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

http://www.freewarereview.info/2006-03/virtual_floppy_drive_-_floppy_disk_imaging_and_virtualization_part_ii.html

http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/Development-Scripts-js/Complete-applications/Virtual-Floppy-Drive-39797.html

As you can see, there are lots of options for the Virtual Floppy Disk and the Virtual Floppy Disk Drive, assuming of course that you can copy the contents of your floppy. :)

assuming that the disk was from a DOS or Windows95 machine, and it has not been damaged, the issue is that it does not contain a 'media descriptor byte' (MDB) on the disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140060

The way I would solve this problem would be to boot the PC with an alternate operating system on a CD on the friends PC, such as:

BART PE
Ultimate Boot CD

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

I'm fairly certain that either BART PE or UBCD do not care about MDBs. therefore you could copy from floppy to USB-stick without a problem.

Alternately, an Apple macintosh computer may be able to read the disk, ironically.